Researching the Histories of Social Class in the Bibliography of British and Irish History 

In this blog post, Lucy McCormick (University of Birmingham) and Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal (BBIH editor) discuss how the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) can be used to research and teach the histories of social class.

BBIH and the histories of social class 

BBIH is one of the most accurate and comprehensive resources available for studying, teaching and researching the domestic and global histories of Britain and Ireland, from 55 BCE to the present day.  

An academic partnership between the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) and Brepols, it provides up-to-date information on over 670,000 history books, articles, chapters, edited collections (mainly published from the early 20th century to present), and history theses (submitted since the late 1990s). BBIH is updated 3 times a year, with c.10,000 new records annually. 

Due to its name and geographical focus, BBIH’s potential for studying, teaching, and researching interdisciplinary and emerging areas within history is not always obvious or intuitive to historians. To address this, Lucy McCormick has made a tutorial video about how BBIH can be used for studying, teaching and researching the histories of social class. Lucy’s tutorial video can be watched on the IHR’s website and YouTube channel and provides historians have powerful ways of finding reliable, accurate, and trusted resources about social class using BBIH. 

Lucy’s experiences designing and making their video 

To conclude my internship at the IHR, I enjoyed producing a video explaining how to use the BBIH to research the history of social class. The internship acquainted me with the BBIH’s cataloguing practices, its subject tree, and the practice of inclusive cataloguing—assets which render the BBIH such a productive tool for historical research. In my video, I wanted to celebrate those features by explaining to users – whether undergraduates or established historians—the potential those tools and practices held to enhance their research or teaching. Given that the thematic focus of my internship was social class, it seemed fitting to marry theory and practice by articulating how the BBIH’s conscientious cataloguing of secondary literature facilitated informed and rigorous research on social class.  

One of my primary objectives in the video was to explain how the BBIH aided research on intersectional identities; historical actors were never solely members of a class, but also gendered, racialised, political agents, inhabitants of a particular region, and so forth. An understanding that individuals occupied multiple identity categories simultaneously is a fundamental principle of the BBIH. Its powerful search tools enable historians to check multiple subjects in the subject tree (or search for names, delimit a timeframe, or delineate a geographical focus, and so on). This not only expediates the search for relevant literature, but also embeds the complexity and multidimensionality of historical actors into the research process itself. I demonstrated this in my video with an example of searching for literature surrounding working-class suffragettes, through which I aimed to enliven the value of the BBIH’s search capabilities. 

Further to this, I also walked viewers through the broader research process of searching for pertinent scholarship and managing references. The minutiae of this process are seldom discussed and thus often mystified, which can render the organisation of a research project complicated and daunting for more junior historians. I hoped that this thorough breakdown would clarify a straightforward and effective method to search for literature, create citations, and keep track of references. I explained how to use Boolean operators—ubiquitously useful across BBIH, other databases and library and archive catalogues—as well as the unique tools built into the BBIH’s interface, such as the hitlist filters, email alerts, and links to the UK’s National Archives, reference management software, and digital access via libraries and Google Books. This paints a vivid picture of the utility of the BBIH as a ‘one-stop shop’ for research. 

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to create a resource which condenses the valuable skills and information I learnt during my internship, and I am pleased to see my video published on the IHR’s website. I enjoyed learning to use new technical tools to communicate this knowledge in an engaging and creative way, only adding to the value I derived from the internship. I hope the video proves useful to historians at varying stages of their careers and perhaps persuades them to use the BBIH to produce innovative and inclusive research. 

Lucy McCormick is a PhD student researching the international alliances between campaigners for women’s suffrage at the turn of the twentieth century. She is especially interested in how friendship sustained this network amidst global conflict and interpersonal tensions. 

Jenny Lelkes-Rarugal joined the IHR in 2021 and is responsible for the BBIH. 

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